Amazon Echo Show 11

An 11 inch Echo Show, which is a Full HD touchscreen sitting on a fabric covered base with Alexa built in, a camera for video calls and a smart home hub inside the same box. It does what a smart display does: the time, the weather, your photographs, your doorbell and camera feeds, timers in the kitchen, music out of a real woofer, and an answer when you talk to it.

• The screen, and what the extra size buys you
• The camera and video calls
• It is a smart home hub as well as a speaker
• Glacier White and Graphite
• What you need to have ready

The screen, and what the extra size buys you

The panel is 11 inches across and runs at 1920 by 1200, which Amazon call Full HD. On a display you glance at from across a room rather than hold in your hand, the size is the whole feature: a recipe stays readable from the other side of a worktop, a camera feed is big enough to tell you who is at the gate, and a video call shows a face rather than a thumbnail.

Sound comes out of a 2.8 inch woofer behind the fabric, and Amazon describe the result as spatial audio with up to twice the bass of the Echo Show 8 from their 2023 range. That is the manufacturer comparing two of their own products, and it is worth reading as such, but it does tell you the speaker is sized to fill a room rather than to sit quietly on a desk.

The camera and video calls

A 13 megapixel camera sits centred above the screen. It frames automatically, so it follows you and keeps you in shot as you move around a kitchen instead of leaving you at the edge of the picture, and it will zoom to 3.3x. Amazon also apply noise reduction to the microphone feed on a call.

It is a smart home hub as well as a speaker

This is the part that changes what else you have to buy. The Echo Show 11 has a smart home hub built into it: Zigbee, Matter, and a Thread border router. A Zigbee bulb, sensor or plug can join it directly, and Matter and Thread devices can be added without a separate bridge sitting on your router. If you were about to buy a gateway as well, you may not need one.

It also supports Amazon Sidewalk. The Echo Show 8 (2024) we stock carries the same hub hardware in a smaller screen, so the choice between the two is the size of the display rather than what it can control.

Glacier White and Graphite

Amazon sell the Echo Show 11 in two finishes, Glacier White and Graphite, and both are photographed in the gallery above. They are the same device; only the fabric on the base and the trim around the screen change. Ask us which finish we are holding before you order, because we stock one at a time rather than both.

What you need to have ready

A Wi-Fi network on either 2.4 or 5 GHz, a mains socket near where the screen is going to live, and an Amazon account, which is what Alexa signs in to. The 30 W power adapter is in the box and the screen runs from the mains the whole time, so there is no battery in it and it is not a device you carry from room to room.

Ask us which plug is fitted to the adapter in the carton before you order, because that varies by the batch we receive.

If a full sized screen is more than you want, the Amazon Echo Pop is the small speaker at the other end of the range, with no display at all. Wikipedia keeps a plain history of the Amazon Echo Show line and how the screen sizes have changed.